Perfect Pauses: 6 Underground

Don't worry, I'm not going to start telling you about it every time I pause a movie to go to the bathroom.

But this one did stand out to me, not for capturing a felicitously frozen moment, or for being an apt commentary about something going on in the story. No, this one stands out just for its beauty.

It may sound like I'm tiptoeing dangerously close to ogling actress Adria Arjona, one of the stars of the 2019 Netflix movie 6 Underground. She is beautiful, but that's not what I'm doing. The beauty I'm really talking about is how she is captured in a single moment that a fashion photographer would envy.

That hair could not be more perfectly blown astray by the wind, and the light giving her eyes the appearance of two different colors also adds an alien quality to her appearance. And anyone who's ever seen a model walk down a catwalk knows that they are considered the most optimal specimens of modeldom when they have a confrontingly alien quality to them.

I was actually going to initially write that 6 Underground looks so beautiful, overall, that every pause was a Perfect Pause. This was undone a bit by the fact that I paused it a half-dozen more times and none of the others were particular noteworthy.

But I was also given pause, so to speak, by a realization about 25 minutes in (after this Perfect Pause), when I was prompted to finally check my phone to see who the director was. 

Lo and behold, it's Michael Bay.

Which makes perfect sense given the subject matter and general appearance of the film, but I guess I never thought it was possible to forget that Michael Bay had directed a movie, and usually not possible for me to miss one of his movies at the time they came out. (I see them all if only so I can rip on them when I review them, as happened with Transformers: The Last Knight, but which did not happen with 13 Hours: The Secret Solders of Benghazi.)

I'd be lying if I said it didn't taint my enjoyment of the movie just a bit to know that Bay was the one responsible for it, though I've liked Bay films before. I still found it hugely entertaining overall, as it's both kinetic and funny, and never drags even at a very Michael Bay-like 128 minutes. 

It was also a reminder that Bay is indeed capable of some legitimate cinematic beauty, even though it's always undercut by one too many shots of helicopters or hot women (both of which appear plenty here). I do wish I had not discovered it was Bay until after the movie was over, as it would have created the rare unbiased consumption of a movie without knowing who is behind the camera.

I might have even given 6 Underground four stars out of five based on pure entertainment value. Learning it was Bay did not make it the 3.5 stars I gave it -- it's still the same movie that entertained me -- but it did make me conscious of some of Bay's regular preoccupations and cinematic tics that he should have progressed past at this point. That he's still stunted in some of his more pubescent tendencies is a weakness for the film when he's the director of it, maybe not so much when someone else is.

In any case, his films always produce good fashion photography stills, and probably always will. 

Building a better Transformers movie

Most people I know have been pretty excited about the release of Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim. With some of those people, "excited" is an understatement.

For those who haven't been excited, though, it usually comes down to this:

"It looks like just another Transformers movie."

I can see their point. The essence of Pacific Rim and of a Transformers movie are the same thing: giant robots fighting each other and causing lots of property damage. 

Oh yeah, the robots in Transformers turn into cars and trucks and planes and microwave ovens. The robots in Pacific Rim presumably don't do that. But that's not really an essential part of what the Transformers are. In fact, you could almost say that we look past the parts where they're driving around or flying or cooking a TV dinner in two minutes, because we've seen that stuff before. It's the robots leveling buildings that we paid for.

Which means not only is Pacific Rim like a Transformers movie, they are both really like a Godzilla movie. In fact, since Pacific Rim features large reptilian aliens as its villains, you might say it's a bit like a mashup of a Transformers movie and a Godzilla movie. As ever, there's nothing new under the sun.

The thing is, even though the Transformers movies have been phenomenally successful, and Michael Bay is making at least one more, they have exactly zero artistic credibility. That kind of thing won't stand for a genuine artist like del Toro, who made such innovative genre movies as Mimic and Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and is even capable of exquisite Oscar bait like Pan's Labyrinth. It won't stand even though he has to answer to "the money guys," who aren't going to give him the funds to do something like this unless he can promise a commercially successful movie. (Promises, promises.)

So, having considered the ways Pacific Rim is like a Transformers movie, here are five ways that I hope and expect it to be different:

1) No stultifying jingoism. It very much helps that del Toro is a Mexican, not an American like Bay, meaning there's a much lower chance of the rah-rah patriotism that suffocates the Transformers movies. Even if he thought it was a good idea for the story, del Toro's nationality would likely preclude including such nonsense. My guess is that the battles between robots and aliens will be fought equally on the soils of many different countries ... and most of the characters will just happen to speak English.

2) Fight scenes you can actually follow. The most deafening regular criticism of the Transformers movies is that you can't tell what the hell is going on. The fight scenes are shot/animated in such a way that they come off as indistinct masses of whirring metal grinding up against each other. Bay has tried to address those criticisms within his movies -- I actually thought the fight scenes were significantly clearer in Revenge of the Fallen -- but that criticism has still dogged the franchise throughout. You can bet del Toro is not going to give anyone the chance to say the same thing about Pacific Rim.

3) No ridiculously beautiful actresses who stink at acting. One of the other regular criticisms of Bay in the Transformers franchise is the way his camera hungrily takes in the curves of his female stars. Ever since he photographed Megan Fox's motor oil-smudged body leaning over a car engine in the first Transformers, we've known just what Bay thought of putting eye candy on screen. When he and Fox had a falling out (that has since been patched up), he cast an even more blatantly hot replacement, model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, for the third movie. (Fox is hotter, but at least she technically already had an acting career, whereas Huntington-Whiteley didn't.) Rinko Kikuchi and Heather Doerksen are both attractive women, but 10-to-1 you're not going to see them sprawling their glistening bodies over any kind of engine in Pacific Rim.

4) A lot less comic relief. I'm not going to say that Guillermo del Toro has no sense of humor, but I can almost guarantee you that no part of Pacific Rim will feature John Turturro in thong underwear.

5) The music won't be all up in your face. One of the most distracting things I noticed in the execrable Transformers: Dark of the Moon was how much Bay's music choices were getting all up in my grill. Whether we're talking about grating pop songs, uplifting orchestration or shallowly melancholy guitar riffs, Bay infuses all of his music choices with his singular Bay-ness. There will be music in Pacific Rim, I'm sure, but it will surely blend more seamlessly into the fabric of the movie than Bay's choices.

Because of these five factors and maybe a sixth or seventh (Charlie Hunnam is a significantly less famous lead than Shia LaBeouf), I also expect Pacific Rim not to do as well at the box office as a Transformers movie. Sad but true.

My hope is that it will at least do well enough to give other visionary directors the chance to put their own distinct spin on other familiar genres or movie types. Only this way can we continue to keep future Transformers movies, or the equivalent thereof, at bay -- so to speak.

Is Bay's pain our gain?

It must have pained Michael Bay to make a movie with so much ... potential.

So much apparent originality. So much (intentional) humor.

So much ... pizzazz.

Could this really be the Michael Bay we know and hate?

I'll believe it when I see it, and I may actually see Pain & Gain. Why not? Even if there weren't some dream casting here (Dawyne Johnson, Mark Wahlberg, Tony Shalhoub, Ed Harris), movies about gonzo Floridians always have a special verve about them. (I'm still thinking about Spring Breakers more than you'd think I'd be thinking about a movie I saw three-and-a-half weeks ago.)

Could I secretly, maybe, want Michael Bay to prove he's worth something? I don't know, out of some unlikely affection for the original Transformers movie and The Rock?

I won't go that far. But I may go as far as to plunk down my money at the box office of a local multiplex, to watch a movie about clueless steroid freaks who get in over their heads and pull off capers that will certainly result in numerous absurdly comical deaths.

Somehow I've managed to see the trailer only once, too, which means the best parts haven't really been ruined for me through sheer saturation.

I guess there are benefits to only getting out to the theater a half-dozen times so far in 2013.

Michael Bay vs. Roland Emmerich

Michael Bay gets a bad rap.

At least, compared to Roland Emmerich.

You would agree that Bay and Emmerich, throughout their careers, have indulged in essentially the same brand of disaster porn, to borrow a phrase I heard on the radio last night. Both love explosions. Both love end-of-the-world scenarios. And both love to cram as much high melodrama as possible into those exploding end-of-the-world scenarios.

Yet Roland Emmerich enjoys relative anonymity among average filmgoers, while Michael Bay is so stigmatized by the movies he's made that he's become a household name. In fact, I'd argue that even dumb people see Michael Bay movies in spite of themselves -- that's how far the cultural besmirching of Bay's name, encouraged by snarky entertainment writers like myself, has extended.

I'm not saying it's not deserved.

But it's just as deserved for Emmerich, if not more so. In fact, since Emmerich's films have been just as high-profile, and just as poorly received, as Bay's, I'd argue that the main reason he is not widely perceived as the same kind of poster child for crap is that his name is all foreign, and therefore, harder to remember. (Emmerich was born in West Germany; Bay, appropriately, in L.A.)

The thing is, I don't actually know myself which one is worse. I have my suspicions, but I can't say for certain. And so it is that I've devised a little system to determine who is worse -- for me, anyway. I can't speak for you.

See, I noticed recently that Bay and Emmerich have very similar careers. Not just their subject matter, but the period they've been working as well. Both directors are 44 years old, Emmerich just having celebrated that birthday a week ago today. Emmerich got started in his career earlier, but he didn't direct a true blockbuster until 1994, when Stargate came out. (He'd directed the largely unseen Universal Soldier two years earlier, and then a couple totally unseen projects before that.) Bay got started a year after Stargate with Bad Boys. Each has been steadily contributing their unique brand of schlock since then.

And I realized something else: After 2012, which I saw last night, I have seen exactly seven films by each director. The last seven films, in fact, as I never saw the original Bad Boys (though I did see the sequel), and I've seen every Emmerich film since Stargate (Stargate included). Pity me, dear reader.

Could this comparison line up any more perfectly?

So here's what I will do -- and I use the future tense, as I have not actually done it as I type these words. I will rank Bay's and Emmerich's films from 1 through 14, "best" to worst. And then I will add up their personal rankings within those rankings. Lowest score wins.

I will tell you this, hence revealing my bias -- Emmerich would have fared a lot worse in this duel before I saw 2012 last night. But more on that in a moment.

Now please excuse me for a moment or three as I go off and make my rankings. To you, it will seem instantaneous.

Without further ado, and with short explanations for each:

1. 2012 (2009, Roland Emmerich). Yes, Emmerich's newest film is the best of the bunch. Really. More on that in a moment.
2. The Rock (1996, Michael Bay). Yes, Bay's oldest film is the second best of the bunch. I guess he hadn't learned his terrible tendency toward bombast yet. Followed by ...
3. Stargate (1994, Roland Emmerich). ... Emmerich's oldest film (that I've seen). I don't remember much about it, but when it comes to these two directors, that probably means it was decent.
4. Transformers (2007, Michael Bay). Controversial ranking. It worked for me.
5. Pearl Harbor (2001, Michael Bay). Again, controversial. I found myself defending this movie upon leaving the theater. It has not held up in my mind, but I can't forget that I did that. So sue me.
6. Independence Day (1996, Roland Emmerich). I really think this film is bad, but not compared to the others lower on this list.
7. The Day After Tomorrow (2004, Roland Emmerich). Again, bad. But the pickings are getting slim.
8. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009, Michael Bay). Held my attention for a surprisingly long time, before it didn't.
9. Godzilla (1998, Roland Emmerich). Good destruction, bad everything else.
10. Bad Boys II (2003, Michael Bay). Not good. Watchable in parts.
11. The Patriot (2000, Roland Emmerich). I think I disliked this film more than most people. I really, really disliked it. Fewest explosions in any Emmerich movie, except maybe Stargate.
12. Armageddon (1998, Michael Bay). Not only did it suffer terribly in comparison to 1998's other asteroid movie, Deep Impact, but it's also Bay's most shamelessly jingoistic film. Blecch.
13. The Island (2005, Michael Bay). Bay's worst film. In part because it had such an interesting beginning, and then became 100% ridiculous.
14. 10,000 B.C. (2008, Roland Emmerich). Emmerich's worst film, and the worst of the bunch. Just awful. I can't even bring myself to say any more about it.

Michael Bay: 2 + 4 + 5 + 8 + 10 + 12 + 13 = 54
Roland Emmerich: 1 + 3 + 6 + 7 + 9 + 11 + 14 = 51

Well well well. Roland Emmerich wins. I have to say, I was not expecting that.

In fact, I will admit to you now: This post was envisioned to show you that Roland Emmerich is actually worse than Michael Bay, or at least just as bad. (Originally conceived title: "Just as bad as Bay?") But I thought I should give each a chance to have that assessment "scientifically" tested. And it turns out, Emmerich is not quite as bad.

And he has 2012 to thank. If 2012 had been half the train wreck many were expecting it to be, Bay certainly would have won this duel. But it isn't. You can argue until the cows come home about the tastelessness of all this orgiastic destruction in a post-9/11 America ... but then again, you could have argued the same thing about The Day After Tomorrow. The fact is, the destruction sequences in this film are hypnotic; Emmerich somehow manages yet new ways to envision the end of the world even after already doing that twice in Tomorrow and Independence Day.

But what really makes 2012 better than any Emmerich film -- any film by either director -- is the writing. I understand that this is a frankly shocking statement. However, the dialogue was good, the film moved a long at a good pace (it was actually a brisk 158 minutes), and there were few scenes that did not clearly contribute to the trajectory of the story. Plus, there were some really smartly timed reveals of previously unknown information. And Emmerich himself actually deserves the credit for this, having co-written the script with Harald Kloser. Just one quibble about the script: the repetition. Not only do planes take off three different times just prior to being engulfed by the earth, but the writers flog the joke where somebody says "I think we've seen the worst of it" right before another giant fissure opens up.

The biggest surprise, however, is that the acting is not hammy. John Cusack probably sets that tone, and a handful of talented actors -- Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Woody Harrelson, Amanda Peet, and yes, in this case, Danny Glover -- manage to maintain it. What do they all have in common? Roland Emmerich was directing them. Good on ya, Roland. You're learning.

A couple other random thoughts from watching 2012:

1) If you're planning to watch a 158-minute movie, it's a good idea to pee twice before it starts, if you can. That's right, I peed twice last night at the theater -- once about ten minutes before screening time, and once during the commercials that precede the trailers. I got little more than dribbles the second time, but it helped me hold out.

2) If you're planning to watch a 158-minute movie, Reese's Pieces make a great choice to sustain you through the movie. Long after your popcorn -- which sometimes runs out during the trailers -- is gone, you'll still have plenty of the no less than 492 individual pieces in that surprisingly large bag. In fact, I ate my last few with less than ten minutes left in the movie. And yes, I did feel sort of sick from all that peanut butter. But I got the sustained regular eating experience I desired, without having to consciously monitor my intake.

3) If the world does indeed end on December 21, 2012, I might just be okay with it. Sound crazy? Here's my thinking. If the Mayans were in fact able to predict the end of the world thousands of years ago, it means somewhat definitively that our world can't be explained by science alone. This also means that maybe, just maybe, there is an actual afterlife where we will all go after that apocalyptic 24-hour period. It'll be pretty crowded, but hey -- the consciousness will live on. If science can't explain the Mayans' prediction -- they couldn't have been that good at astronomy, nor fully comprehended the deadly consequences of planetary alignments -- then who's to say that all the other stuff with no scientific proof, like religion, can't be true? And that's about as religious as I get.

An appropriately weighty way to end a post about two guys who specialize in ridiculous spectacle, don't you think?

Also, how do you rank these directors' films? I'd be surprised if many -- any -- of you had the displeasure of seeing all 14 films I discussed above. But let me know how you weigh in on the ones you did deign to see.

Video store Darwinism

So if you were following my "Most Recently Seen" updates (to the right), you may have noticed that I finally broke down and saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen last Friday. Yep, that was my big punishment to Michael Bay for making another noisy piece of idiocy full of racially insensitive robots -- to wait exactly 30 days after its release before adding my $17 to the coffers.

Hey, my friend wanted to go. I was just trying to be social.

(And yes, I did feel terrible spending more money on this movie than I have on any previous movie. It appears they've hiked the IMAX prices again, and since I bought mine online, there was a $1 service fee as well).

As with the first one, I suspect I liked it more than most of my friends -- those who saw it, anyway, since most of them were unwilling. I guess there's something about the character design of the robots (when you can see them properly), and the large-scale havoc they create, that goes straight to my id. But I did like it less than the first one, and the end was so long and overblown that I was actually falling asleep. There, Michael Bay -- there's your ultimate indictment. I fell asleep during your grand finale.

Apparently, though, if you check my "Most Recently Seen" feature again, I must have liked it well enough. Well enough to go out and rent Transmorphers: Fall of Man, anyway.

(Pause for laughter.)

Yes, you read that right: Transmorphers: Fall of Man. It's in the video store now. Go take a look if you don't believe me.

I rented it because I thought it was finally time to write about a phenomenon that has both bugged me, and made me laugh my fool head off, for a couple years now. Namely, "quickie" straight-to-video knockoffs made in order to coincide with the theatrical release of legitimate big-screen blockbusters. These pretenders have been crassly produced with the sole purpose of trying to convince a flustered consumer walking the video aisles that they're renting the Real McCoy.

Hey, it's a dog-eat-dog world out there -- if you are parted with your money over one of these hoaxes, you clearly weren't fit enough to survive.

Me? I was parted with my money (or rather, a free online trade-in) for the purposes of science. Because I write a movie blog, I thought it was finally time to see one of these movies, even though I missed Transmorphers when it was released to coincide with Bay's first Transformers in 2007. I usually try to avoid seeing sequels before the original, but I made an exception in this case.

(Pause for laughter.)

I say that it was finally time to see one of these movies. Well, what exactly do I mean by "these movies?" (What do you mean "you people?")

How about this?

Or this?Or this one?


Or any of these?




(A couple notes on this last group. While Clawed is about the Sasquatch, the poster is so shamelessly modeled after Saw that it hardly matters if the subject matter is different. The Terminators actually appeared as a trailer on my Transmorphers DVD (along with the awesomely-titled Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus). And Pirates may be the most pernicious of the bunch, as it appeared not in some special section of the Blockbuster, but in the same new release area where Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest would have appeared. I'm sure some hopeless parents were confused into buying a softcore porn starring reformed hardcore porn stars, such as Janine).

They're all funny, these naked attempts to steal our money by insulting our intelligence. Then again, maybe we deserve it -- the only way these films would even be worth making is if people bought and rented them.

But the funniest has got to be Transmorphers: Fall of Man, as even the part after the colon is an attempt to fool us, with the words "Fall of Man" clearly echoing "Revenge of the Fallen." You see, it's all about making something click in our minds. We half-remember the title -- maybe this was it after all. And since the poster art is ten times fancier looking than anything in the movie -- especially since there's nary a skyscraper nor a tank in it -- a person can almost be excused for getting confused.

Almost.

And so it was that I decided I should actually view Transmorphers 2 before I wrote this post.

What did I learn?

1) It's not bad as you'd think it would be -- nor is it the least bit good.

2) Its only recognizeable star is Bruce Boxleitner. That's right, the erstwhile Scarecrow to Kate Jackson's Mrs. King.

3) It really has a lot more to do with the Terminator mythology, plot-wise, than the Transformers mythology. Yeah, the robots are disguised as everyday objects, such as cars and cell phones, initially, but once they "transmorph" a single time, they pretty much don't go back. Then they seek to bring about the end of the world -- or at least, the end of the small patch of California desert outside Bakersfield that's in the film's budget. I assume the original Transmorphers was a lot more Terminator-oriented, as this is a prequel (how sophisticated these knockoffs get) from before the machines took over. At the end, this one dude -- played by the perfectly named actor Shane Van Dyke -- becomes "leader of the resistance." His name is Con Jonner. (Okay, I made that last part up.)

4) If you are making what's known in the industry as a "mockbuster" -- I just now learned this term from wikipedia -- it doesn't actually matter if your movie is like The Terminator, or Transformers, or Driving Miss Daisy. All you're really trying to do is get people in the door. Once they've rented (or if they're really stupid, bought) the movie, you don't care if they're satisfied with their purchase or not. You're not looking for repeat customers. You're looking for a quick clutch at the money, then hopping a plane to somewhere far far away.

The article on wikipedia also reminded me of another title I'd tried to find, but struck out on: The DaVinci Treasure. Apparently, most of these monstrosities -- including a "competing" version of War of the Worlds released on video at the time of Steven Spielberg's, and this year's The Land That Time Forgot, starring C. Thomas Howell -- are the brainchildren of a "film studio" called The Asylum. Now I know.

Of course, when I told a couple people that I'd be watching Transmorphers, they wondered aloud whether it had a chance to be better than the newest Transformers. If I were a lot more mercenary or a lot less honest, maybe I'd tell you that it was. But no -- Transmorphers is pretty ridiculous, even if it wasn't as howlingly ridiculous as I hoped it would be.

Besides, when you're watching the howlingly ridiculous parts of Transformers, at least you feel some sense of the cleanliness and legitimacy that Hollywood has bestowed on it.

And, unlike those poor saps who walked away with Ratatoing, you know what you're getting yourself into.

An honest Michael Bay movie

I can feel it.

I'm trying to deny it, but I feel it nonetheless. A desire creeping up inside of me ... a desire to potentially see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in the theater.

Why, Vance? Why?

My official position on this movie has been one of doubt at best, sneering superiority at worst. There was nothing in me that was the least bit curious about the next chapter in this story. The silly title made it all the worse. Which Transformers are considered to have "fallen," and why did they need "revenge?" I couldn't remember. Their ability to deliver revenge, for that matter, would be entirely dependent on how far they'd "fallen" -- a lot of the time, to be "fallen" means you're dead, and you can't get revenge when you're dead. (Unless you're, like, a ghost. Robot ghosts?) What's more, I couldn't imagine why we needed to see Transformers on the screen again. Didn't the first movie say all that needed to be said, do all that needed to be done, for us to get the Transformers-based nostalgia out of our system?

But then a funny thing happened. I remembered something I'd conveniently forgotten. Namely, that I sort of liked the first Transformers.

Not enough to want to see another one, apparently -- or so I'd thought. But why not? I had fun watching it. Fun enough.

And then I noticed myself lured in by the billboards featuring a Transformer (I know almost none of their names) standing by an Egyptian pyramid. (It's not the same image as this poster, but close enough).

And then I heard that sound in the ads -- that sound the Transformers make when they go from vehicle to robot. It's a satisfying sound effect. Even though it's not very similar, it reminds me fondly of that awesome noise the giant robots made in War of the Worlds right before they started shooting. You know the one I'm talking about.

And then there's, well, Megan Fox. It's almost difficult to look at her. She's like some robot of hotness herself. It's imposing.

Michael Bay is enough of a creative bottom-feeder that it gives me great shame to consider contributing to his box office take. But should it? Maybe we need to examine whether there are certain circumstances under which it's okay to like a Michael Bay movie.

And I think there are. I think it's okay to like a Michael Bay movie if he's honest about the fact that he just wants stuff to blow up. Michael Bay is at his "best" when he doesn't try to do much more than that.

Let's take Transformers. Transformers is the ultimate example of a movie where the only thing that needs to happen is stuff blowing up. Yeah, there was a love story -- of course there was, there always is. But I don't remember it being particularly intense. And I don't remember a lot of people crying. I just remember stuff blowing up.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have Armageddon, a film I hate. What movie begs for stuff to blow up more than an asteroid movie? But not that much stuff blows up in Armageddon. No, this was one of those movies where Bay indulged his Achilles' heel for American flags, jets streaking through skies, and people blubbering emotional crap at each other. I feel like that scene where Bruce Willis says goodbye to his daughter is still going on.

You can break down much of Bay's career this way. Stuff just blew up in the two Bad Boys movies, and in The Rock, though I guess, there was probably at least a small dose of emotional crap in each of those movies. But see, I don't remember it. It didn't overwhelm the movie. Those movies aren't great -- The Rock may be his best, but that's not saying much -- but they were all they needed to be: popcorn movies.

Then you've got Pearl Harbor, the go-to movie when you're trying to slam Bay. It's bombastic and maudlin, and people are crying all over the place. The attack scenes were pretty phenomenal, actually, but all everyone remembers is the ridiculous Titanic-sized love story between Ben Affleck and Kate Beckinsale. And because I don't like throwing my initial impressions of movies under the bus (speaking of Titanic), I will admit that when I left Pearl Harbor, I was saying things like "Oh come on, it wasn't that bad." And I wasn't the only one of the four or five of us who saw it together who felt that way. Still, this movie is considered one of Bay's biggest turkeys, and it's undoubtedly because he tried to do too much.

Then there's one movie I haven't mentioned yet, which might be his worst -- even worse than Armageddon. It's The Island, and it's kind of in a category all its own. All of Bay's movies have high concepts, but this seemed to be different -- a potentially idea-heavy movie about an apocalyptic disease outbreak, cloning, and Big Brother. Yet in this movie, it's as though he didn't try to do enough. A movie that should have been about its ideas was instead about things blowing up. Michael Bay explosions that are organic to the story -- as they almost always are -- are one thing. But an orgy of car chases, helicopters and debris falling off buildings -- in a movie that should have been cerebral -- is just insulting. I don't know where this fits into my thesis, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

There's nothing essentially wrong with movies where stuff just blows up. We try to be superior to those movies because we pretend to want intellectual meat in everything we see. But sometimes, let's admit it, we just want to see chunks of shrapnel and balls of fire. We don't have to be ashamed of it.

So stick to that, Michael Bay. Blow stuff up. Just don't try to make us feel pride in America for being able to blow up stuff better than anyone else. Don't try to get us feeling jingoistic about explosions. If we need to see flapping American flags, we'll go to the state house, or a baseball game. And for crying out loud (pun intended), don't try to direct people making tearful farewells. You just can't do it, and we don't care enough about those characters to feel their pain.

Will there be tearful farewells between Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen? Or will we just get another heavy helping of robot mayhem?

I'm trying to determine if I'm going to allow myself to find out.

The embarrassing involuntary spine tingle

A very disappointing thing happened to me at the end of watching a very disappointing movie last night:

My spine tingled.

Damn these involuntary body functions.

The movie was Michael Bay's The Island. I had always wanted to see it, even though I knew it would be terrible. Everyone had told me it was terrible. But I have a thing about movies with high concepts, especially when they are set in dystopian futures. I know that no matter how much they suck shit, I will always find time to see them, eventually.

Well, it was actually worse than I imagined. In a movie that clocks in at over 2:10, only the first half-hour even contains anything interesting. The remaining 1:40 is composed of the stereotypical Bay fetishes: unnecessary chase sequences, cars flipping end over end, large pieces of industrial equipment dropping from great heights, people dangling from those same heights, and low angle shots of people strutting, with helicopters flying over their heads, in slow-mo. And the acting? Ewan McGregor managed to come out okay, but Scarlett Johansson was simply howl-worthy.

Yet when all the imprisoned clones are finally freed at the end -- sorry if I'm ruining anything for you -- I was surprised and disgusted to feel a chill go down my spine.

Now, I knew I hated this movie -- and I'm not going to pull out my shrink's notepad and tell you that on some subconscious level, I liked it, or bonded to the characters. So I chose to chalk it up to what it was: a classic emotional manipulation, successful enough to affect me on a biological level that was totally anathema to how I felt about The Island intellectually.

If you've seen this mess, you remember the scene, and if you haven't, well, stop reading if you don't want The Island to be spoiled. (I'm doing my best to stifle my laughter.)

McGregor's character succeeds in pressing some buttons, and gets a ten-ton gear the size of a skating rink to come crashing to the ground. This somehow allows all the cloned people in white suits to come running out of their prisons and go streaming down the sides of the mammoth dunes that surround the complex. Naturally, the camera whips around vertiginously, Bay's fallback way of emphasizing the scope of the drama. The music swells, McGregor and Johansson kiss, and the credits roll.

Oops. Goosebumps. Darn it.

The reason Michael Bay can still make movies is that most people can't distinguish a cheap chill from genuine catharsis. It goes without saying that no Michael Bay film has ever had a genuine emotional climax, so that means his cheap chills have been pretty effective. Oh, and I guess you can't discount the average American's love for watching stuff blow up.

I'm just glad my mind can tell the difference, even if my body can't. Hey, emotional manipulation works. Ever found yourself tearing up at the end of a movie you thought was stupid? It's the same principle. Even if you know better, you succumb to the director's pernicious agenda. You feel emotions that are totally undeserved, that spring more from the music or the camerawork than the script or the acting.

Oh well. We're only human. Which is more than I can say for Michael Bay's clones -- or Michael Bay himself.